Birds of the Man Made Ecosystems: the Plantations

Background

The authors compare bird diversity in Uttara Kannada, India, comparing intact evergreen and secondary moist deciduous forests to teak, eucaplypts and betelnut plantations with the intent of addressing two questions: what level of diversity can a plantation support and how to species compositions compare to nearby forests?

Conclusions & Takeaways

Their findings indicate that beternut and evergreen forests had the fewest species, while eucalypt and teak were slighting higher and that the secondary moist forest plots had the highest bird diversity.
They also examined species composition and found that human modified landscapes had more species characterisitic of urban areas, suggesting that endemic and specialist species cannot survive in these altered habitats.